Coins, especially copper large cent and small cents are judged by the 3rd parties based solely on their degree of wear in most instances, unless they have been cleaned which will result in a different holder or label. The advanced collectors also judge them on surfaces as well, be it nice chocolate brown, dark, corroded(scudzy), have scratches or other man made marks, so in effect they net grade the coin from it's degree of wear to reflect it's other flaws. An XF coin maybe net graded to VF 20, or a Fine, net graded to VG8, due to various maladies.
This does not happen so much in silver/gold issues as they don't tend to have some of these issues with the base metal.
To equate it to cards would be the typical qualifiers MC or OC or ST where a card appears Exmt or Nrmt etc but has one of the problems noted and the result is a card with a value of approximately 2 grade levels lower.
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